A very friendly island

Hello All,
We got visited by all the officials this morning. They were all very nice people. They came out to the boat and checked us all in. They have a few fees I needed to pay and so I needed to exchange some money. After that Jon and I went to the village to look around and went to find a place to change some American dollars into New Zealand dollars. There is a guy by the airport that we were told does this and so we walked 2 miles to go meet him. He has a little store with basic stuff and he told us he was out of money till Thursday. So we walked back to town and looked around a little more and met some really nice locals. One was the teacher at the school and offered us his computer to check internet emails and stuff. We ran into a few others that invited us in there home and just wanted to visit. It was really cool to be able to speak to them in English after 3 months of French speaking people. The Cook Islands are Independent but are very dependent on New Zealand for funding and capital projects. We learned today that Penrhyn has had better days for economy. They used to do pearl farming here in till the late 90s. At that time there were 2000 people that lived here, now there is 200 so you can imagine what the place looks like.
Tomorrow we will head across the lagoon to get protection from the 25 knot winds and 2 foot wind waves that are hitting us right now. As usual the chain got caught on a coral head tonight so we had to reset the anchor chain in the dark, I must be numb to this by now.
We were told that the east side of the atoll is very nice and has some good snorkeling and is protected from the east winds we are feeling right now so we will eye ball navigate our way across tomorrow and check it out. We will be back on Thursday to check out and move on to the next atoll so I will keep you up to date on our progress.
That's all for now and will talk to you soon.


PEACE